Union Trust Building
Historic buildings live to fight another day :By Ron DaParma, TRIBUNE-REVIEW, Sunday, November 11, 2007 A Los Angeles-based investment group's bid to buy and revitalize the venerable Union Trust Building Downtown is reminiscent of other efforts to find uses for a number of significant buildings in the city. As reported by the Tribune-Review, a group headed by executives of Mika Realty Group hopes to complete its purchase of the historic Union Trust complex this month and begin efforts to attract office and retail tenants to the nearly 800,000-square-foot building at 501 Grant St. That may seen a difficult task since the huge structure is vacant except for a few tenants on the street level. However, the city has had a number of buildings on the market before that have found new uses either after they were mostly vacant or were threatened with being so. Take, for example, Gimbles Department Store at Sixth Avenue and Smithfield Street. Gimbles abandoned the 1914-vintage structure in 1986, but six years later, New York developer Richard Penzer purchased it for $2.5 million and converted it into a retail-office building. The building, which was purchased by McKnight Realty Partners of Pittsburgh in December 1998, now is known as the Heinz 57 Center. It is home to a number of office tenants, including its namesake, the H.J. Heinz Co., whose North American operations are based there. Other examples of significant buildings that have undergone transformations with mixed degrees of success include: • Pennsylvania Railroad Station Terminal, Liberty Avenue: It was converted into an apartment/office building in 1988 by Historic Landmarks for Living, a Philadelphia development company. Renamed the Pennsylvanian, it has 242 apartments, with several offices on the first level. It is owned by Brothers Pennsylvania Corp. • Union National Bank, Fourth Avenue and Wood Street: It was purchased in 1997 by the E.V. Bishoff Co. of Columbus, Ohio, and is now the Carlyle, a 61-unit residential condominium being developed by Bishoff. • Joseph Horne's Department Store, Stanwix Street and Penn Avenue: The building was closed as a department store in 1995 by Federated Investors Inc. as part of a deal crafted by the administration of Mayor Tom Murphy to relocate Federated's Lazarus department store from there to a new building at Fifth Avenue and Wood Street. The building was purchased by Oxford Development Co. and converted into Penn Avenue Place, an office and retail building. Highmark Inc. is the major tenant. • Lazarus-Macy's Department Store, Fifth Avenue and Wood Street: After the store closed, the building was purchased by Washington County developer Millcraft Industries Inc., which is converting it into Piatt Place, a $65 million office-condominium-retail complex. • Mellon Bank, Smithfield Street: In 2000, it was converted into a Lord & Taylor Department store. That closed in 2004, and the building was purchased by Braddock Hills-based J.J. Gumberg Co., which seeking new tenants. The building remains empty. • Alcoa Building, Sixth Avenue: With Alcoa planning a new headquarters on the North Shore in 1996, Paul O'Neill, chairman, announced plans to donate the aluminum-skinned building across Sixth Avenue from Mellon Square to the Southwest Pennsylvania Corp. for use as an economic development hub. The building, now the Regional Enterprise Tower, serves as headquarters for a variety of public, semi-public and nonprofit organizations.